Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Clean-Up Planned for Mount of Olives Cemetery

Prominent Jewish leaders around the world have joined forces to create an international- watch committee to clean up the Mount of Olives cemetery. The leaders say the cemetery has fallen into “utter chaos” since Israel regained control of the area in 1967. The committee is planning a kick-off event to raise public awareness on Saturday night at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem.

“There isn’t a Jewish cemetery in the world that’s as neglected,” lamented Menachem Lubinsky, a New York businessman whose parents are buried in the cemetery.

He told The Jerusalem Post that his brother Avraham hatched the idea for an international committee after visiting their parent’s grave this past spring, when he noticed eight nearby graves destroyed with a “the kind of maliciousness that defies imagination.”

In May, the State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released a report that slammed successive governments for not providing basic maintenance and security in the cemetery. Last week, the Knesset State Control Committee, headed by MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima), said the government had agreed to refurbish 20,000 graves by the end of 2013 – about 7,000 per year. Some 200 security cameras will also be installed in, and around, the cemetery.